More Planning

We've had two email questions about our planning efforts. Here are my almost verbatim replies.

Q1: Are you couchsurfing, airbnbing?

SL has mapped out (literally) possible hotels - no CS or ABB -  for all of Greece and Albania, Montenegro, and most of Bosnia. So far nothing has caused us to change our long time practice and new slogan: We don't book, we look. ;-) 

However, for two reasons we have decided  to contact some CSers along the route. One, they may have helpful on-the-ground information, and two, it may be nice to have cup of coffee/chat with a local in some places we visit.

Q2: Can you get by with English in all these places?

I'm guessing that many hotel managers will know basic English; and that bus drivers, taxi drivers, and ticket sellers will know little or no English. Therefore we'll need to know how to properly pronounce our destination city or town. ;-) And knowing how to say "please stop right now" may come in handy along with "I am a vegetarian".

We are learning to transliterate Greek letters into Roman letters and getting pretty good at place names and things bus schedule related. And soon will do the same for Cyrillic.

Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria have pretty good English versions of their national rail system's websites. And many bus lines have good English websites.

Romanian is a Romance language and it looks like we'll be able to get a lot of meaning from written Romanian, be unable to understand only a few spoken words as it sounds quite unlike Spanish or Italian, and be able to utter some heavily accented words and phrases.

Sounds like a lot of fun to me. ;-)

Trip Planning

Places of interest have been identified.



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Tickets Bought

After a good bit of planning we have tickets to and from the Balkans.

• Feb 21 2014: Raleigh, NC to Athens, Greece
• Jun 10 2014: Skopje, Macedonia to Raleigh, NC

Tales of Two Paddles

Our last camp and paddle trip to Merchants Millpond State Park yielded three great paddle days. So when we set out earlier this week for another trip to MMPSP we had high hopes.

Well, we loafed at the campsite Monday afternoon, did not paddle, and enjoyed the solitude of being the only campers in the park. Tuesday was overcast with threatening rain but we put the canoe in the water anyway. The millpond was choked with duckweed and we struggled to make it back to Bennett's Creek. The water was high and we made good progress up the creek, but after one slow detour around a beaver dam and a portage (with lunch break) we turned around, failing to beat last Spring's upstream distance record. However, on the way back we were rewarded with an up-close look at a bald eagle; first flying low beside us through the trees, then a few minutes later circling around to our left side with a limp heron hanging from his talons. Wow!

We were up early Wednesday morning but the light rain and cold temps drove us back to Raleigh with dry paddles. However, since the canoe was still on top of the car and Thursday looked like a good day to paddle, we headed 80 miles east on Thursday morning to get in a day paddle on Contentnea Creek, upstream and back, from the Snow Hill boat ramp. It was a very nice paddle, reminding Sun-Ling and I of the blackwater creeks of Florida. The water level at the Hookerton gauge was 5.31 feet and we paddled over most of the downed trees but did have to portage a downed tree around the oxbow. We'll definitely be back to the Contentnea which has about 80 miles of navigable waters.

Campfire.


Bennett's Creek Portage and lunch.




Duckweed on the Millpond.


Contentnea Creek Portage and lunch.


Florida? No. It's North Carolina.


The put-in at Snow Hill.

Grayson Highlands State Park

Recently back from a great camping and hiking trip to Grayson Highlands State Park located near Mouth of Wilson, Virginia.

The weather was perfect, the campsite great, the sunrises awesome, and the hiking fabulous.

Here's a photo of us at the top of Mt Rogers, the highest point in Virginia, and claims to be "highest state highpoint east of South Dakota that doesn't have a road leading to its summit". How about that? ;-)



Morning coffee at our campsite (joined by our friend Dayle).


There's no view from the top of Mt Rogers but here's the view from the nearby Appalachian Trail.


The rest of the photos are here.